Prologue: Ashanariune Ascent

The Orb of Natuwin: Ashanariune Ascent1

Let my words be known upon the hour of my death. Let those in peace remember those who have passed, and those restless remember those who remain. Let the faithful be faithless and christened fall. For it is through my eyes they have known him, and through yours shall it continue. For it shall never be the return of what is promised, only of that which is lost
The final words of our Father, Honukar
~From The Relinquishment Jethor-Ishahar 23:202

The Laws of the Angel and Men
Thou shall not slay thy fellow Angel
Thou shall not mingle with the decadence of Humanity
Thou shall not slay in spite nor consume the flesh of any mortal3


In the beginning, there was man, and man alone; mortals who dwelt upon Eternia, besieged by the elements which encompassed them. At the dawn of this age, magick had no precedence, nor the faery of legend. It was, as it is now, an age of darkness.4

In the beginning, before man, there were demons who ruled this world. Dark insidious creatures who dwelt within the World Without Light, a land beneath that which the mortals called their own. For ten-thousand millennia, they watched and waited for the day that they would turn our world into the likeness of their own.5

But there came a day, before the demons could turn our world, when man's vices would bear upon him as an onus born to flesh. For now, wary with discontent of She who had ruled him for millennia since, Man would bring forth a new era, where he did not fear the earth’s embrace, but one which he wielded her to his own bidding; of water, earth, fire, air, and light. So in time, he and his brethren scattered to the winds of a new world, and from them so dawned this age, a new age, an age of Eternia. 6

As the eons past, and from that which was brought from Her womb, our world was born; held by the fury of Her wrath. For now, men bore to light the inanity of the fruit which he had so wantonly tasted. “-Yet slowly, it was as we feared, those who had quenched their lust for the powers unknown, fell to the darkness of the pit within it. Dwarves, stolid, unkempt, and as stout as the rocks which they resided within. Frorians, coy, untrustworthy, and as bitter in nature as the land they dwelt upon. Miderans, minute, homely, and apt to disappear when talk of money arose. Elves, fabled warriors as quick with their tongues as they were with their bows. Humans, fearsome, manipulative, and as restless as the quiet wind that yearns for peace.”7

~ Alatrise, Before Eternia.8

Yet even then, She was not content upon the ruination which held to these new ‘men’, for they possessed the beauty of life and the splendor they had stolen from her very flesh. And so, she fed them the raw power of her heart, magic so pure it marked those who held it, to quench their ravenous need for it…more. She had given her heart to watch men perish and suffer in woe. And from these perversions of the ancient races, so were the harbringers of the first Methereon War born. Goblins, wicked, enervated creatures, who worshipped Her as fanatics of Earth. Orcs, brutish, bestial, and as fine with the blade as they were with their art. Mithorians, ghastly manifestations, who powers were feared even by the Shinothere. Elvarians, pale, deceptive creatures, whose arts rivaled even their brethren the Elves. Delithorians, putrid, undead creatures, whose acumen were not lost with their lives, but souls lost to the worship of eternal life. For an era, we dwelt amongst their kind and withheld our fears of their lustful nature. Yet our father and their mother’s feud fled on, as the name of our land had held, in an eternity.9

But it was not they, the darkness, which blighted our land and bequeathed to us the descendants of a peaceful earth, a life of angst and sullied hands. It was our mother, filled discontent and spite, who urged the demons to our plane upon on the Age of Seraphina. They bled from the earth, from her womb, and from the sky. Alongside, their elementals, the nature which we had so feared for ten millennia, shook us from our hearths and scattered us to the winds. It was as it is now, an age of Darkness.10

Yet, it would not be He, Azrael, who would plight our land for the next millennia. For upon the tenth year of the Karlatharion, the war of men and demons, Honukar, and the eleven commanders of the Dinivær, led the remnants of Eternia to the fields of Adamar. It was there, the demons were routed in return to the World Without Light, and She returned to her place by our Father. And so it seemed, for a time, that Eternia had once more reverted to the peace which it had held before.11

Yet, the famine and strife grew within the Dinivær, who hungered for power that was theirs during the war. They had grown in stature and renown, and unknowingly, so had the faith of Eternia altered their very beings. 12

For men become gods and gods, men, through faith alone.13

Once more, the divisions grew and so against the will of our Father’s son, Honukar, the Dinivær shattered, and so bore forth the Shinothere and the Veraminthe. For the demons had learned well from their mother, and with their return to the World without Light, they left a festering seed which bore forth upon the flowering of the roses of the Dinivær; Azrael himself had cursed our world to satiate Her hate with the thick, viscous blood that flowed through our veins. And when the roses had spread forth their petals to the dawning of a new age, so did they thrust upon one another with increased fervor, forever intertwined in flesh and soul. Yet Honukar knew he could not deter his children from their wanton path, and so from his tears and their blood he crafted the magick which would bear forth the faery and the power possessed by our lords. It was… the dawning of the Age of Magick, the grandeur and height of Eternia, with the birth of the Orb Natuwin.14

Yet it fell upon a single night, the peace of our world, to the treachery of Veraminthe. For the Dinivær had grown powerful, and in the extent of their immortality, they yearned for magick; its raw and voluptuous lure. They delved into its embrace, and bore forth from it the Orb of Natuwin, the power of the elements. Their father, Honukar, had long since departed into the unknown, fortelling his return. But he did not return, and so his children had grown restless. For on the fall of Harashorn, the dawn of Honukar upon the Veil, the Veraminthe turned upon Shinothere, in the darkness of the night. 15

The Veraminthe had embraced She and the Shinothere our Father. Now they would carry forth the feud of the Cosmos, of Erone and Methera. It was the beginning of our time, an age of darkness…16

For a thousand years Eternia we knew only of the feud of Erone and Methera. For a thousand years our wanted Mother tasted the flesh and blood of her children. And upon a single day, Eternia shook in the fervor of those it had lost. Upon the cries of the heartless wounded and the festering dead, Lord Keulian Mikawlra spoke to us its name, Infiratus Otha, the beginning of the Methereon War. For a millennia our hands were sullied with the blood of our brethren, our souls wearied, and our women lonely. For a millennia, our people toiled endlessly, our faces blackened with the soot of flame, our hands worn from earth, our fields barren and unyielding. There were none not born into this age of darkness. There were none who would forget its embrace. Power was all the Veraminthe knew and yenned for, and it mattered not that they took without fear, the innocence of our world. 17

And on the three hundredth and sixty first year of the Metherean War, the Shinothere, who could bear no longer the tormented cries of the faithful, enjoined the remaining Magickaans to scatter the Orb of Natuwin into the Boroshan.; that which had been sought and bled for, that idol of inanity which they had cradled in their arms for four centuries; that being which possessed the coveted power of their Mother, Methera. And upon the fourth Age of Eternia, so did the Magickaans disperse from the ravaged land the power of our Father, into the land of the forsaken, the Boroshan. And so it was, that the Shinothere held to their power upon our land and the Veraminthe were bound to their abode, that fortress of the forsaken, Aslagathia18

Yet that which was was not meant to be, for even then the Shinothere could not bear the onus which had born them to an eternity of service and multitude. For without the Veraminthe, they grew weary of our world. Without foe, they spurned our faith, that faith which had brought to them the power which they had possessed. And so it was, unfettered, that being, the Shaethore, was granted as a devout follower of the Veraminthe, a dreamer, and impure soul of love and discontent, the possession of the Harashat; the blood of the eleventh apostolate Jethor-Ishahar, who had departed into the distant abode of the sea, in search of a more innocent world which he could begin anew.19

There were many who had avowed to venture forth into the Boroshan, to return that idol of virility, the Orb of Natuwin. There were none who returned but one, and it was he, this traitor, the Shaethore, who would forever mark our world with his touch. Yet It would been many years in passing, a millennia in of question and four centuries of clarification, before our elders came forth to discern the beginning of it all, the birth of this traitor who bled our world. 20

It had been many years before when he had avowed his fervent soul unknowingly to the hands of other. And when the time had come, they had taken him, from a life unabounding and fruitful, unwillingly, to redeem this pact forever marked in blood. He had begged, he had wept, yet they would not yield. For these fiends, these pagans, against his will, bled him of that life which caressed his very soul. 21